“Let her go.  I have her—­safe!”

Hal was just above the smoke belt, and his own head was reeling, now.  Tongues of flame leaped out at them all.  Speed alone could save them from one of the most painful of deaths.

Down through the belt they moved.  As they neared the ground willing hands reached out to catch them.

“Pull those blankets off the girl!  They’re afire,” shouted one man, and was obeyed.  Mlle. Nadiboff, after the blankets had been stripped away, was carried off, still unconscious though safe as far as fire was concerned.

The clothing of both the submarine boys had caught and was smouldering.  Both Jack and Hal submitted to being thrown on the ground and rolled until the last spark had been extinguished.

“Bring milk—­a lot of it, for these young men,” ordered a physician who stood in the crowd.  For Jack and Hal, on their feet again, leaned almost helplessly against Farnum and Pollard.  Their lungs were so filled with smoke that both boys felt as though they could never breathe again.

When the milk was brought, however, and forced down their throats under the doctor’s orders, they found that this somewhat oily fluid brought back a good deal of the missing power to breathe.  After a while both boys began to move about again.  Yet both felt a strange feeling of oppression and weakness.

“For the rest, your feelings will simply have to wear off,” the physician told them.  “You’ll be all right in time.  And it was a fine, manly piece of work that you both did.”

After nearly an hour of stubborn work the firemen saved the main building, though that southern wing was practically destroyed.

When the danger was over hotel discipline asserted itself once more.  News was passed that the belated dinner was ready, and the lately excited guests filed in for their meal, though many complained of a loss of appetite.

Neither Jack nor Hal felt like eating then.  They sat by Messrs. Farnum and Pollard, though the submarine boys contented themselves with sipping more milk.

“That was one way of answering the enemy’s threats,” laughed the shipbuilder, in an undertone.

“We don’t know that Mlle. Nadiboff was in any way connected with the threats,” replied Jack, in an equally low tone.

“She belongs in the enemy’s ranks,” observed David Pollard, dryly.

As the quartette were leaving the table one of the negro waiters stepped up to them.

“De lady dat was brought down outah de fiah done wanter see Marse Benson in de parlor,” announced the waiter.

“Mlle. Nadiboff?” inquired Mr. Farnum.  “Then I guess we had all better go in Jack, I’m going to keep you in my sight.”

As they entered the parlor the submarine people saw three or four women standing about a sofa on which lay the pretty Russian.

At sight of the newcomers the Russian signed to the attendants of her own sex to raise her, and then to withdraw.  Jack went forward to the sofa, his friends taking seats on the opposite side of the room.